[MUD-Dev] Nation of shopkeepers

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, Martin Keegan wrote:

> There've been many interesting attempts to provide muds with fully
> functioning (even 'player-run' ;) ) economies. It's quite easy to
> implement player-owned shops. Slightly harder is coding player-run shops.

But, as always, this is really a non-issue. It's possible to code
literally anything you want (even if it ends up horribly hacked) - the
only barrier is the "Hangon, why bother thinking this through if it's
going to be soo hard?" trail of thought. ;)
 
> Note that I said "coding"; actually implementing player-run shops would
> appear to me to be extremely difficult - because giving players incentives
> to sit around behind a counter all day rather than go out and adventure
> would appear to be impossible. This same problem, of no-one being
> interested in the more menial jobs in a mud economy, would seem to stymie
> any decent attempt at a player-run economy, which is a pity.
>
> Does anyone have a solution to this?

Not a complete one, as of yet. A few thoughts along the subject:

Players do not have to tend the counter all the time; let them hire an
assisstant, but make the assisstant subtract from profits (obviously -
wages), to give them incentive to serve instead of the assisstant, whom
could also be rather unreliable, in a number of ways. It's fun to "play
shop" for a little while every other day or so, but boring to do it for a
couple of hours each day.

More menial stuff is different, and actually harder to sort out I think..
say, fishing, smithing, and lower down stuff (street sweeping?).

The first two actually produce a product, and can have interesting twists,
the latter? Nothing I can see. :)
 
> Mk
> 
> P.S. An exception might be running a pub :)

Hah!

Of course, creating a "supply and demand" cycle that puts pressure on
players to do menial things might work - for instance, if the inn cannot
produce food without someone giving them raw fish, fresh meat etc..

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"He can't stop us, we're on a mission from Glod!" - Soul Music (Pratchett)